Journey to Mt Moffatt

On the way to Carnarvon Gorge in the Central Queensland Sandstone Belt, Tim and Ros Bowden stopped off to explore Mount Moffatt.

As the black cockatoo flies, there is only about 40km between the Mt Moffatt section of the park and Carnarvon Gorge, but to drive there you have to negotiate a 310km loop on a mix of dirt and bitumen roads. We liked the idea of heading for Mt Moffatt first, for some isolated and old fashioned camping. Or so we hoped. Due to restrictions it's getting harder and harder to make a fire and cook a camp oven roast dinner.

We live on the mid-north coast of New South Wales (people often say to us, 'But why would you want to go anywhere else'?) and started grinding up the Great Dividing Range via the Thunderbolts Way in our trusty Series 80 LandCruiser 'Penelope' and a recently acquired Goldstream Sovereign off-road camper (so luxurious by our standards it was immediately dubbed 'The Palace'). We're not the only grey nomads to come up with silly names for our vehicles!

We turned off the Pacific Highway at Nabiac, and then headed up to Krambach and Gloucester, by which stage the coastal showers began to leave us. And by the time we reached the high plateau country and Nowenduc and Walcha, we were in sunshine and under a blue sky lightly flecked with small clouds, which is a great way to begin a two-week camping holiday. It was mid-April, and we had heard Carnarvon National Park had received recent rain, but it stayed fine for us throughout.

Once over the range (which had us back to first gear) we cruised comfortably at 100km/h over the undulating and lush green high country, crossing the New England Highway at Uralla and on past Bundarra and Bingara - through pretty country with little pointy hills, sclerophyll woodlands and Calitris trees - to Warialda on the Gwydir Highway and west to Moree where we camped for the night. For our second day's run we turned north on Carnarvon Highway to Mungindi on the Queensland border, St George and a lesser (but good) sealed highway directly to Mitchell. There we topped up with fuel and filled an extra 20-litre jerry can as we would not get any more diesel until we left Mt Moffatt five days later. We camped at Mitchell to stock up with provisions as we would be away from shops for the next 10 days.

Mitchell to Mt Moffatt is 220km, the first 120 on single strip bitumen. Easter rains had chopped up the dirt badly, but hey, what's the point of having a 4WD and rough-road camper if you can't take that in your stride? We drove through cattle properties bursting with green grass and fat stock. In fact, the Mt Moffatt run only became a national park as late as 1979. The explorer Thomas Mitchell was the first European to the area in 1846, and one year later Edmund Kennedy passed through on his way to find the notional 'inland sea'. Mitchell wrote favourably of the country he had seen and settlers with cattle were not long behind him - from 1859 onwards.

We saw well-preserved post-and-rail cattle yards near the Ranger's Residence (the old station homestead) as we called in to register on our chosen camp site, Dargonelly Rock Hole. I noticed Penelope's altimeter had us at 700m. Later we climbed to 1100m in the 4WD to see the Mahogany Forest, the modest beginnings of Carnarvon Creek and a fabulous 360 degree vista.

There are four camping grounds at Mt Moffatt, the prosaically named Rotary Shelter Shed in the high country to the north, West Branch in the centre of the park, and Top Moffatt to the east. Dargonelly was a good choice for us, with mown grass, shade from well-established gum trees, a long-drop dunny, plenty of potable bore water and - hurrah! - a ground-level fireplace for our camp oven roasts. We made an instant decision to settle ourselves there for four nights and do day trips around the park.

Our fridge and stove run on LPG gas, so with an auxiliary battery in Penelope and in-built deep-storage battery in The Palace, we can be independent of mains power almost indefinitely without solar panels - provided there is a modicum of running about to top up the auxiliary.

Journey to Mt Moffatt

On the way to Carnarvon Gorge in the Central Queensland Sandstone Belt, Tim and Ros Bowden stopped off to explore Mount Moffatt.

As the black cockatoo flies, there is only about 40km between the Mt Moffatt section of the park and Carnarvon Gorge, but to drive there you have to negotiate a 310km loop on a mix of dirt and bitumen roads. We liked the idea of heading for Mt Moffatt first, for some isolated and old fashioned camping. Or so we hoped. Due to restrictions it's getting harder and harder to make a fire and cook a camp oven roast dinner.

We live on the mid-north coast of New South Wales (people often say to us, 'But why would you want to go anywhere else'?) and started grinding up the Great Dividing Range via the Thunderbolts Way in our trusty Series 80 LandCruiser 'Penelope' and a recently acquired Goldstream Sovereign off-road camper (so luxurious by our standards it was immediately dubbed 'The Palace'). We're not the only grey nomads to come up with silly names for our vehicles!

We turned off the Pacific Highway at Nabiac, and then headed up to Krambach and Gloucester, by which stage the coastal showers began to leave us. And by the time we reached the high plateau country and Nowenduc and Walcha, we were in sunshine and under a blue sky lightly flecked with small clouds, which is a great way to begin a two-week camping holiday. It was mid-April, and we had heard Carnarvon National Park had received recent rain, but it stayed fine for us throughout.

Once over the range (which had us back to first gear) we cruised comfortably at 100km/h over the undulating and lush green high country, crossing the New England Highway at Uralla and on past Bundarra and Bingara - through pretty country with little pointy hills, sclerophyll woodlands and Calitris trees - to Warialda on the Gwydir Highway and west to Moree where we camped for the night. For our second day's run we turned north on Carnarvon Highway to Mungindi on the Queensland border, St George and a lesser (but good) sealed highway directly to Mitchell. There we topped up with fuel and filled an extra 20-litre jerry can as we would not get any more diesel until we left Mt Moffatt five days later. We camped at Mitchell to stock up with provisions as we would be away from shops for the next 10 days.

Mitchell to Mt Moffatt is 220km, the first 120 on single strip bitumen. Easter rains had chopped up the dirt badly, but hey, what's the point of having a 4WD and rough-road camper if you can't take that in your stride? We drove through cattle properties bursting with green grass and fat stock. In fact, the Mt Moffatt run only became a national park as late as 1979. The explorer Thomas Mitchell was the first European to the area in 1846, and one year later Edmund Kennedy passed through on his way to find the notional 'inland sea'. Mitchell wrote favourably of the country he had seen and settlers with cattle were not long behind him - from 1859 onwards.

We saw well-preserved post-and-rail cattle yards near the Ranger's Residence (the old station homestead) as we called in to register on our chosen camp site, Dargonelly Rock Hole. I noticed Penelope's altimeter had us at 700m. Later we climbed to 1100m in the 4WD to see the Mahogany Forest, the modest beginnings of Carnarvon Creek and a fabulous 360 degree vista.

There are four camping grounds at Mt Moffatt, the prosaically named Rotary Shelter Shed in the high country to the north, West Branch in the centre of the park, and Top Moffatt to the east. Dargonelly was a good choice for us, with mown grass, shade from well-established gum trees, a long-drop dunny, plenty of potable bore water and - hurrah! - a ground-level fireplace for our camp oven roasts. We made an instant decision to settle ourselves there for four nights and do day trips around the park.

Our fridge and stove run on LPG gas, so with an auxiliary battery in Penelope and in-built deep-storage battery in The Palace, we can be independent of mains power almost indefinitely without solar panels - provided there is a modicum of running about to top up the auxiliary.

Exploring Mt Moffatt

Another brilliant autumn day had us strapping on our walking boots and driving back towards the entrance of the park where a two-hour walk takes in some intriguing natural features - The Looking Glass (a hole weathered through a sandstone pinnacle), The Chimneys (intriguingly shaped sandstone pillars) and Cathedral Rock (a sandstone bluff with its grey walls covered in stress fractures). We were fascinated by The Tombs rock art site, where under the shade of a sombre outcrop, natural fissures were used as burial chambers by Aboriginal people.

Skeletons were once wrapped in bark cylinders and placed in rock crevices. Sadly, over the years visitors took away the remains, leaving no evidence of the mortuary culture. Stencils of hands and paintings of animals are remarkably well preserved, and we sat on benches on the protective boardwalk silently absorbing the ambience still pervading this ancient burial site.

That night I cooked the greatest camp oven roast of all time - a rolled shoulder of lamb and roast veggies - and we sat outside under blazing stars savouring our evening meal, washed down with a few warming reds, beside our camp fire. We had the camp ground absolutely to ourselves.

Most of the park roads are two-wheel drive, except to the high country to the north and east of the park. On our way to the Mahogany Forest at 1100m, we stopped by the Marlong Arch, a natural sandstone feature, and then engaged four-wheel drive for the climb up to the highest campsite in the park, the Rotary Shelter Shed. We think we could have pulled The Palace up there, but by this time were rusted on to the delights of our Dargonelly camp. We then took a climb to the Top Shelter Shed for panoramic views of the mountains around us, and a fantastic, but chilly, lunch stop.

As we entered Mahogany Forest, the track bordered by stately stringybarks, Ros saw a flash of red in the foliage of some Macrozamia cycads, which are from an ancient species that were around in dinosaur times. Their fruit bursts out of a large pineapple-shaped pod and is bright red. The ripe fruit is poisonous to humans, but the Aborigines found a way to cook and eat it. The seeds need to pass through the gizzard of an animal to propagate and the emu is big enough to do the job. Ros found and photographed an emu scat with the egg-sized seeds exposed.

Later we drove to Top Moffatt camp site on a designated four-wheel drive track, but we had no trouble in two-wheel drive mode, taking a detour into the most central camp site, West Branch, on the way.

Although the Mt Moffatt section of the Carnarvon National Park would be buzzing at peak times like Easter, we only met four other campers there, so it's great for some solitude. We weren't going to miss Carnarvon Gorge though, and getting there was half the fun! But that's another story.

Caravan+RV magazine, issue 13, October/November 2009.